Fightinville Journal

 A man was sitting on the sill of the foundation of the old club across the street, a popular place for people to hang out in decent weather. Far enough from the shelter to be peaceful, seemingly abandoned enough not to catch people's attention.  There's an alley on the other side of the old club that people frequently use to get high, fuck, or use the toilet, and earlier I had to run off a nearly-psycho homeless woman and an old man I actually casually know to keep them from doing one or more of those things. A couple of years ago when she was fairly fresh on the street, the same woman crouched behind her wagon and shit on the sidewalk while I looked on from my porch. It wasn't until she left I saw the pile of shit. The sitting man was an older white guy with white hair and beard, cleanly dressed in jeans and a nice cardigan.  I went up to chat with him and offered him one of my chocolate coins. He politely declined. I explained to him the situation which he took amiably...

 Back at the club a day later, the Constitutional man from the day before was in the street, distraught, and gesturing at another man lying facedown against the doors of the club in a small pool of his own blood. I've been seeing this a lot lately. Whatever the formulation of the latest batch of spice they're smoking is, it's making them lose consciousness almost immediately. I knelt and checked for a pulse, but then could see the man breathe. Right after I stood up, a medic police officer showed up. She began giving the man, whose name I had now learned was Denzel, a sternum rub. Eventually the ambulance arrived, and Denzel grew combative as the cop tried to keep Denzel still while the paramedics got a stretcher ready. During all this a crowd started growing, and among the crowd I recognized by their clothes and demeanor some young drug dealers. Several other cops were there, and I began to ask them why they couldn't do something about all the drug dealing going on. Th...

 My neighbor has been having trouble with people across the street from her house.  She lives on the corner next to both the club and the land the shelter is on.  She called me the other day because a homeless woman who was sharing a tent with a homeless guy got out completely naked in broad daylight and was just hanging out.  So I went and talked to the diner staff who said they'd been hearing complaints. A day later I walked down there again, to see what was going on. Three homeless guys were piled up under the club awning. One was slumped over on his stuff, high and passed out. Another was as glazed as was humanly possible, and a third was leaning against the wall seemingly not high at all.  I offered each of them a chocolate foil-wrapped coin from kids Christmas stockings, and told them quietly we would prefer they not smoke their drugs so close to our homes. The least high guy started to get Constitutional on me, and during the course of his insistence on h...